Complete Works of Oscar Wilde

by Oscar Wilde

  Ambition’s slave, was crimson-stained rose

  Or the gold-sceptred crocus? The bright bird

  Sang out of tune for me, and the sweet flowers

  Seemed but a pageant, and an unreal show

  That mocked my heart; for, like the fabled snake

  That stings itself to anguish, so I lay

  Self-tortured, self-tormented.

  The day crept

  Unheeded on the dial, till the sun

  Dropt, purple-sailed, into the gorgeous East,

  When, from the fiery heart of that great orb,

  Came One whose shape of beauty far outshone

  The most bright vision of this common earth.

  Girt was she in a robe more white than flame

  Or furnace-heated brass; upon her head

  She bare a laurel crown, and, like a star

  That falls from the high heaven suddenly,

  Passed to my side.

  Then kneeling low, I cried

  ‘O much-desired! O long-waited for!

  Immortal Glory! Great world-conqueror!

  Oh, let me not die crownless; once, at least,

  Let thine imperial laurels bind my brows,

  Ignoble else. Once let the clarion note

  And trump of loud ambition sound my name

  And for the rest I care not.’

  Then to me,

  In gentle voice, the angel made reply:

  ‘Child, ignorant of the true happiness,

  Nor knowing life’s best wisdom, thou wert made

  For light and love and laughter, not to waste

  Thy youth in shooting arrows at the sun,

  Or nurturing that ambition in thy soul

  Whose deadly poison will infect thy heart,

  Marring all joy and gladness! Tarry here

  In the sweet confines of this garden-close

  Whose level meads and glades delectable

  Invite for pleasure; the wild bird that wakes

  These silent dells with sudden melody,

  Shall be thy playmate; and each flower that blows

  Shall twine itself unbidden in thy hair –

  Garland more meet for thee than the dread weight

  Of Glory’s laurel wreath.’

  ‘Ah! fruitless gifts,’

  I cried, unheeding of her prudent word,

  ‘Are all such mortal flowers, whose brief lives

  Are bounded by the dawn and setting sun.

  The anger of the noon can wound the rose,

  And the rain rob the crocus of its gold;

  But thine immortal coronal of Fame,

  Thy crown of deathless laurel, this alone

  Age cannot harm, nor winter’s icy tooth

  Pierce to its hurt, nor common things profane.’

  No answer made the angel, but her face

  Dimmed with the mists of pity.

  Then methought

  That from mine eyes, wherein ambition’s torch

  Burned with its latest and most ardent flame,

  Flashed forth two level beams of straitened light,

  Beneath whose fulgent fires the laurel crown

  Twisted and curled, as when the Sirian star

  Withers the ripening corn, and one pale leaf

  Fell on my brow; and I leapt up and felt

  The mighty pulse of Fame, and heard far off

  The sound of many nations praising me!

  One fiery-coloured moment of great life!

  And then – how barren was the nation’s praise!

  How vain the trump of Glory! Bitter thorns

  Were in that laurel leaf, whose toothed barbs

  Burned and bit deep till fire and red flame

  Seemed to feed full upon my brain, and make

  The garden a bare desert.

  With wild hands

  I strove to tear it from my bleeding brow,

  But all in vain; and with a dolorous cry

  That paled the lingering stars before their time,

  I waked at last, and saw the timorous dawn

  Peer with grey face into my darkened room,

  And would have deemed it a mere idle dream

  But for this restless pain that gnaws my heart,

  And the red wounds of thorns upon my brow.

  LIBERTATIS SACRA FAMES1

  Albeit nurtured in democracy,

  And liking best that state republican

  Where every man is Kinglike and no man

  Is crowned above his fellows, yet I see,

  Spite of this modern fret for Liberty,

  Better the rule of One, whom all obey,

  Than to let clamorous demagogues betray

  Our freedom with the kiss of anarchy.

  Wherefore I love them not whose hands profane

  Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street

  For no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reign

  Arts, Culture, Reverence, Honour, all things fade,

  Save Treason and the dagger of her trade,

  And Murder with his silent bloody feet.

  SONNET TO LIBERTY

  Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes

  See nothing save their own unlovely woe,

  Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know,

  But that the roar of thy Democracies,

  Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,

  Mirror my wildest passions like the sea

  And give my rage a brother—! Liberty!

  For this sake only do thy dissonant cries

  Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings

  By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades

  Rob nations of their rights inviolate

  And I remain unmoved – and yet, and yet,

  These Christs that die upon the barricades,

  God knows it I am with them, in some things.

  TAEDIUM VITAE1

  To stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear

  This paltry age’s gaudy livery,

  To let each base hand filch my treasury,

  To mesh my soul within a woman’s hair,

  And to be mere Fortune’s lackeyed groom, – I swear

  I love it not! These things are less to me

  Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea,

  Less than the thistledown of summer air

  Which hath no seed: better to stand aloof

  Far from these slanderous fools who mock my life

  Knowing me not, better the lowliest roof

  Fit for the meanest hind to sojourn in,

  Than to go back to that hoarse cave of strife

  Where my white soul first kissed the mouth of sin.

  FABIEN DEI FRANCHI

  To my friend Henry Irving

  The silent room, the heavy creeping shade,

  The dead that travel fast, the opening door,

  The murdered brother rising through the floor,

  The ghost’s white fingers on thy shoulders laid,

  And then the lonely duel in the glade,

  The broken swords, the stifled scream, the gore,

  Thy grand revengeful eyes when all is o’er, –

  These things are well enough, – but thou wert made

  For more august creation! Frenzied Lear

  Should at thy bidding wander on the heath

  With the shrill fool to mock him, Romeo

  For thee should lure his love, and desperate fear

  Pluck Richard’s recreant dagger from its sheath –

  Thou trumpet set for Shakespeare’s lips to blow!

  SERENADE

  (For Music)

  The western wind is blowing fair

  Across the dark Aegean sea,

  And at the secret marble stair

  My Tyrian galley waits for thee.

  Come down! the purple sail is spread,

  The watchman sleeps within the town,

  O leave thy lily-flowered bed,

  O Lady mine come down, come down!
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  She will not come, I know her well,

  Of lover’s vows she hath no care,

  And little good a man can tell

  Of one so cruel and so fair.

  True love is but a woman’s toy,

  They never know the lover’s pain,

  And I who loved as loves a boy

  Must love in vain, must love in vain.

  O noble pilot, tell me true,

  Is that the sheen of golden hair?

  Or is it but the tangled dew

  That binds the passion-flowers there?

  Good sailor come and tell me now

  Is that my Lady’s lily hand?

  Or is it but the gleaming prow,

  Or is it but the silver sand?

  No! No! ‘tis not the tangled dew,

  ’Tis not the silver-fretted sand,

  It is my own dear Lady true

  With golden hair and lily hand!

  O noble pilot, steer for Troy,

  Good sailor, ply the labouring oar,

  This is the Queen of life and joy

  Whom we must bear from Grecian shore!

  The waning sky grows faint and blue,

  It wants an hour still of day,

  Aboard! Aboard! my gallant crew,

  O lady mine, away! Away!

  O noble pilot, steer for Troy,

  Good sailor, ply the labouring oar,

  O loved as only loves a boy!

  O loved for ever evermore!

  CAMMA

  To Ellen Terry

  As one who poring on a Grecian urn

  Scans the fair shapes some Attic hand hath made,

  God with slim goddess, goodly man with maid,

  And for their beauty’s sake is loth to turn

  And face the obvious day, must I not yearn

  For many a secret moon of indolent bliss,

  When in the midmost shrine of Artemis

  I see thee standing, antique-limbed, and stern?

  And yet – methinks I’d rather see thee play

  That serpent of old Nile, whose witchery

  Made Emperors drunken, – come, great Egypt, shake

  Our stage with all thy mimic pageants! Nay,

  I am grown sick of unreal passions, make

  The world thine Actium, me thine Antony!

  IMPRESSION DU MATIN

  The Thames nocturne of blue and gold

  Changed to a Harmony in grey:

  A barge with ochre-coloured hay

  Dropt from the wharf: and chill and cold

  The yellow fog came creeping down

  The bridges, till the houses’ walls

  Seemed changed to shadows and St. Paul’s

  Loomed like a bubble o’er the town.

  Then suddenly arose the clang

  Of waking life; the streets were stirred

  With country waggons: and a bird

  Flew to the glistening roofs and sang.

  But one pale woman all alone,

  The daylight kissing her wan hair,

  Loitered beneath the gas lamps’ flare,

  With lips of flame and heart of stone.

  IN THE GOLD ROOM

  A Harmony

  Her ivory hands on the ivory keys

  Strayed in a fitful fantasy,

  Like the silver gleam when the poplar trees

  Rustle their pale leaves listlessly,

  Or the drifting foam of a restless sea

  When the waves show their teeth in the flying breeze.

  Her gold hair fell on the wall of gold

  Like the delicate gossamer tangles spun

  On the burnished disk of the marigold,

  Or the sunflower turning to meet the sun

  When the gloom of the dark blue night is done,

  And the spear of the lily is aureoled.

  And her sweet red lips on these lips of mine

  Burned like the ruby fire set

  In the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine,

  Or the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate,

  Or the heart of the lotus drenched and wet

  With the spilt-out blood of the rose-red wine.

  IMPRESSIONS

  1

  Les Silhouettes

  The sea is flecked with bars of grey,

  The dull dead wind is out of tune,

  And like a withered leaf the moon

  Is blown across the stormy bay.

  Etched clear upon the pallid sand

  Lies the black boat: a sailor boy

  Clambers aboard in careless joy

  With laughing face and gleaming hand.

  And overhead the curlews cry,

  Where through the dusky upland grass

  The young brown-throated reapers pass,

  Like silhouettes against the sky.

  2

  La Fuite de la Lune

  To outer senses there is peace,

  A dreamy peace on either hand,

  Deep silence in the shadowy land,

  Deep silence where the shadows cease.

  Save for a cry that echoes shrill

  From some lone bird disconsolate;

  A corncrake calling to its mate;

  The answer from the misty hill.

  And suddenly the moon withdraws

  Her sickle from the lightening skies,

  And to her sombre cavern flies,

  Wrapped in a veil of yellow gauze.

  IMPRESSION

  Le Réveillon

  The sky is laced with fitful red,

  The circling mists and shadows flee,

  The dawn is rising from the sea,

  Like a white lady from her bed.

  And jagged brazen arrows fall

  Athwart the feathers of the night,

  And a long wave of yellow light

  Breaks silently on tower and hall,

  And spreading wide across the wold,

  Wakes into flight some fluttering bird,

  And all the chestnut tops are stirred,

  And all the branches streaked with gold.

  HÉLAS!

  To drift with every passion till my soul

  Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,

  Is it for this that I have given away

  Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?

  Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll

  Scrawled over on some boyish holiday

  With idle songs for pipe and virelay,

  Which do but mar the secret of the whole.

  Surely there was a time I might have trod

  The sunlit heights, and from life’s dissonance

  Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God:

  Is that time dead? Lo! with a little rod

  I did but touch the honey of romance –

  And must I lose a soul’s inheritance?

  TO V.F.1

  Through many loveless songless days

  We have to seek the golden shrine,

  But Venus taught you how to twine

  Love’s violets with Apollo’s bays.

  TO M. B. J.1

  Green are the summer meadows,

  Blue is the summer sky,

  And the swallows like flickering shadows

  Over the tall corn fly.

  And the red rose flames on the thicket,

  And the red breast sings on the spray,

  And the drowsy hum of the cricket

  Comes from the new mown hay.

  And the morning dewdrops glisten,

  And the lark is on the wing,

  Ah! how can you stop and listen

  To what I have to sing.

  IMPRESSIONS

  1

  Le Jardin

  The lily’s withered chalice falls

  Around its rod of dusty gold,

  And from the beech-trees on the wold

  The last wood-pigeon coos and calls.

  The gaudy leonine sunflower

  Hangs black and barren on its stalk,

  And down the win
dy garden walk

  The dead leaves scatter, – hour by hour.

  Pale privet-petals white as milk

  Are blown into a snowy mass:

  The roses lie upon the grass

  Like little shreds of crimson silk.

  2

  La Mer

  A white mist drifts across the shrouds,

  A wild moon in this wintry sky

  Gleams like an angry lion’s eye

  Out of a mane of tawny clouds.

  The muffled steersman at the wheel

  Is but a shadow in the gloom; –

  And in the throbbing engine-room

  Leap the long rods of polished steel.

  The shattered storm has left its trace

  Upon this huge and heaving dome,

  For the thin threads of yellow foam

  Float on the waves like ravelled lace.

  LE JARDIN DES TUILERIES

  This winter air is keen and cold,

  And keen and cold this winter sun,

  But round my chair the children run

  Like little things of dancing gold.

  Sometimes about the painted kiosk

  The mimic soldiers strut and stride,

  Sometimes the blue-eyed brigands hide

  In the bleak tangles of the bosk.

  And sometimes, while the old nurse cons

  Her book, they steal across the square,

  And launch their paper navies where

  Hugh Triton writhes in greenish bronze.

  And now in mimic flight they flee,

  And now they rush, a boisterous band –

  And, tiny hand on tiny hand,

  Climb up the black and leafless tree.